“It’s different than what I expected.” I said with a gasp. Even as he spoke to me, the repetitive digging never stopped. Vibrating, poking, scraping up the delicate flesh over and over.
“Talk to me about how you feel, not the hurt of the needle, but the reason you’re here. What pushed you?”
“I told you already,” I was getting irritated. He was so calm, pausing in his work every so often to wipe the skin of my wrist and then go right back.
“Oh, you told me about Richard. Yes, I even remember his name. You told me about what he did, but not about how it made you feel. Pain for pain. Tell me and I’ll paint it. I’ll carve it out and give you what you need, but you have to tell me how. Do. You. Feel? Are you sad? Heartbroken?”
Heartbroken? Sad? I had thought so at first. After all, anyone in my position would definitely be entitled to those feelings. But were those my feelings? I didn’t really miss Richard, actually at all. Our relationship must have been oatmeal bland for me to lament the loss of him as little as I did. I probably missed Cindy more. I missed our daily emails, I missed the girl talk and the feeling of having a connection with another woman in our male-dominated industry. I didn’t miss her enough for forgiveness, though.
“You know what, Beck? What does it say about me when I tell you I’m not sad? It’s only been about four months, and I barely think about either of them unless something sets me off. Like that stupid bed, or how I get my ass chewed at work over dropping that bitch as a client. Sad? I’m not sad, I’m furious. I am filled with rage at the thought of the lies and deceit. That I trusted both of them and they thought so little of me that they lied. That they lied and were okay with that. That I wasn’t adult enough or important enough for the truth. I’m enraged.”
“Outline’s done,” Beck murmured to himself. The vibrating stopped for a few moments and I heard the sound of more packages being torn open.
“Keep your eyes closed, Regina.” Something had definitely changed. His voice was silky, a purr against my ears—more sensitive to sound now that the machine was off and my eyes were closed. An involuntary shiver ran down my spine as I sat in the chair, waiting for him to begin his work again. The outline was done? Next, I knew, came the color.
The machine started working again, but I barely felt the needle pricking my skin anymore. Beck had my full attention when he asked, “What’s the story with the bed?”
I was still sleeping on the couch. I wasn’t proud of it, but all of a sudden I wanted to talk about it. Like getting it out would maybe make me feel better about the entire situation. The whole affair was so stupid, really.
“That mattress cost me two thousand dollars, Beck.” I judged by his lack of response that he was waiting for me to continue. Just the whir of the needle and the occasional wiping motion, but no words.
“It’s only eight months old. Seriously. I don’t want to sleep on it if they had sex with each other there, and it’s not like I can just call one of them up and ask, hey, did you boink on my bed? I just need to know if I need to light it on fire are not. K, thanks, bye.” The words were coming in a rush now, I couldn’t stop them. They rolled out of my mouth on wheels, and once airborne, I couldn’t retrieve them.
“I can’t take it back unless it’s broken and it’s a really great mattress. It isn’t going to break, but fuck me if I’m going to sleep on a mattress those two had sex on, no matter how much it cost me. I never even got to have sex on it.”
And there it was. The painful truth. I just publicly declared what had been eating at me the most. Not that Richard had cheated, but the reality that he hadn’t been intimate with me for quite some time. Just two people occupying the same space, going about their lives. I was angry at Richard and Cindy to be sure, but I was also insanely pissed at myself. That I had been so complacent that I could live in such delusion as to be content in what was obviously a loveless relationship. That it was probably also my fault that I was feeling as terrible as I did. That I was so naïve about the status of life that I didn’t even try for anything better until the choice was taken away from me.
“I’m pissed, Beck. I’m pissed that I was so stupid I didn’t even try to be happy. I didn’t even know any better. I want to be smarter, I want to be stronger.”
“Hmm,” was his only reply. The admission Beck had wrestled out of me left me spent, breathless and boneless in the chair. He ripped the most secret part of my pain from me while he worked, and now that I no longer held it inside of me, I was drained. Exhausted from the effort.
I barely noticed when the machine stopped running, I had become so used to the methodical poking and scraping that I was surprised when Beck’s hand brushed the top of my head and he said, “Open your eyes now, Regina. You can look.”
I was already emotionally compromised when I opened my eyes and saw his work. That was the only excuse I had for why the tears started leaking from the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks. It was beautiful, and nothing like what I had requested. Larger than I thought it would be, about three inches around, was a chrysalis, the outer shell of a caterpillar before it transforms. I had asked for a butterfly, and he had given me a chrysalis. As a testament to his insane skill, the chrysalis was transparent and yet full of the swirling jewel tones of wings not yet fully formed. It looked like a watercolor painting, and it was breathtaking.
“It seems to me, Regina,” he said while he busied himself by rubbing a thick salve over my entire wrist, “you are just starting your journey. A butterfly has already gone through all of its changes, but you are just beginning. You barely know what changes you want to make yet. You are just starting to become the woman that you want to be, and I think you need this reminder—a reminder of your journey to be something that you look at every day. Am I wrong?”
He wasn’t wrong. He was so spot on that I was having trouble coming up with the right damn words to tell him so, and I just sat there like a fool staring at the beautiful piece of art that he had carved into my skin.
“It’s perfect.” My words so low they were barely there, but he heard them. I know he did. The dimple made another appearance, and I thank the good Lord that I got to be a witness once again. Unbeknownst to me I had been in that chair for two and a half hours. He covered my new, shiny, balm covered tattoo with a dark wrap and used medical tape to hold it down. A five-minute explanation of the proper cleaning and care of my new tattoo while he disposed of the used equipment, and the work was done. There was really nothing else to say.
“Stand up now, Regina.”
His tone brooked no argument, and I was startled by the intensity of the command, because that’s what it was, a command. Confused, I stood slowly from my seat, and no sooner had I straightened then Beck grabbed me by my good arm and pulled me into a rough embrace. His lips were on mine in a heartbeat, his tongue running over my teeth and the inside of my mouth, kissing me hungrily as if I wasn’t just a client in the chair a moment ago. I might have been confused by the change of pace, but I wasn’t going to refuse such a scorching invitation, and I returned his kiss and then some, running my hands through the black waves that I had longed to touch since I saw him leaning in the doorway hours before.
God, every part of him that I could feel under my hands was hard, he was a tightly wound spring, coiled and waiting. There was so much body to run my hands over I finally settled on hanging my arms around his neck while he held me up on my tiptoes, hands squeezing my ass to keep me in place. How I had gone from client to kissing in seconds, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to question my blessings, just accept them graciously—and with tongue.
“What—what just happened?” I was breathless and panting by the time we separated. Beck really was an enigma, and I couldn’t figure him out.
The disarming dimple appeared again “You aren’t in the chair anymore. I don’t have to be a professional. God, I’ve wanted to do that for weeks.” He let my feet fully touch the ground again, but pulled me close in a hug, letting his chin rest on the
top of my head. “You left me standing in the alley holding your panties.” I looked up at him, the argument/explanation on the tip of my tongue.
“Now, wait a minute—”
“I felt cheap.” More dimple. “Used, even.”
Face a raging inferno, I was embarrassed to the tips of my hairline. Looking up, I had to crane my neck to see Beck staring down at me, silently laughing. I couldn’t think clearly when he smiled. Goddamit.
“I’ve never done anything like that in my life,” I sputtered, searching for words to explain myself so that he didn’t think I had sexcapades in alleys regularly. I pulled away from his embrace, needing a little bit of space to come up with a reason I had left him hanging without a goodbye. Acute embarrassment didn’t seem like a good enough excuse, even if it was the truth.
“It’s not my fault you are so big and sexy. I couldn’t help myself, and put that dimple away, it makes me feel stupid.” There it was, his laugh. That rolling thunder that reverberated throughout the small back room.
He grabbed my arm and spun me in a circle, pulling me against him so that my back was to his chest, and we were both facing the same wall. I could see his reflection in the large mirror mounted there, and he met my eyes in our reflection.
“You should make an honest man out of me.” Dizzily, he spun me until I was once again facing him. His lips crashed down hard on mine again, then lazily sucked on my bottom lip, letting it go with a resounding pop. “Let me take you on a date. A real one. If you’re lucky, I will let you keep my underwear this time.”
“Wait, you kept my underwear?” I was going to die of embarrassment. He hadn’t told Cody that had he? Holy shit, I had never left my panties in another man’s possession before in my life, not even with Richard. We did our own laundry, the whole concept was foreign to me, but somehow, the thought of Beck in possession of the panties I wore that night sent a delicious thrill through me. How very naughty. New Regina was immensely turned on.
“To be continued,” Beck said, looking at the large clock on the wall. It was a novelty clock, shaped like something from a Dali painting and absurdly appropriate for the gallery surroundings. “I really do have a previous engagement, and just like Cody feared I would, I worked up until the last minute.” Beck gave me one last squeeze and let me go with a sorrowful look in his eyes as they drifted to my wrist. “Do you love it?”
“It’s perfect.” In more ways than one, but I wasn’t ready to tell him about Beauty Sleeping yet, that could be a conversation for another day. He had somewhere he needed to be, and my head was spinning with the events of the day.
“You mean it?”
“You know it is. Now you’re just fishing.” We were walking out the back door while we talked. Beck took a moment to lock up before we continued to the parking lot. He had been holding my hand and didn’t let go until he walked me to the door of my little green Honda. Holding the door like I was royalty, he dipped his head in one last time after I was seated and stole another kiss. It was an awkward movement, and he cracked his skull on the open window on his way out. I graciously ignored it, even though it looked like it hurt. “I’ll call you.” I believed him. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized I had no idea what my tattoo would have cost. I never paid him.
CHAPTER NINE
A nice grease mark decorated the leg of my charcoal slacks and the hair on the back of my neck was damp with sweat, but I got the changes made to Gecko's order before the pallets were picked up by the trucking company. Gecko was a guy who paid for convenience, and as long as we made sure his orders were packed up correctly, he kept his business with Slow Grind, specifically, with me. Normally when an order went out the door via freight carrier, people wanted it to go as condensed on the pallet as they could to avoid extra freight charges. Not Gecko though, he had a massive warehouse and sold a ton of novelty items, and he was specific about what went on each pallet based on which end of his warehouse it would end up. It might have cost a little bit more to ship, but he saved time and labor when it came to tearing down the pallet and stocking his goods. It was a sharp business decision and I respected it. I was also the only person who would take the time to note that. For every order he placed. Too bad TJ took the order and forgot to check in the book.
I managed to catch the shipment before it was scheduled for pickup, but only just. Leon, the warehouse manager, was grumpy as hell when I told him the pallets needed to be reorganized, but straightened up when he realized I was planning on doing it.
“Regina, you know you and TJ are the only ones in sales that would come out here and do this, right?” An older gentleman in denim coveralls with a graying beard and mustache, Leon had enough on his plate. He didn’t need me barking orders over the phone at the last minute, especially when it came to scheduling freight pickups.
“Leon, if the notes aren’t in the order, you can’t be expected to know what needs to be done. We forgot to put in the instructions, so I’m out here fixing the error. TJ is on lunch and I can’t expect you to tear a pallet down by yourself and switch things out.”
“You’re weird, but you’re an alright broad,” Leon said as he signaled to the forklift driver to place the newly separated and wrapped pallets back on the shipping dock. I didn’t take offense to that kind of talk. Not anymore, especially when I had to deal with the shit Jeremiah said all day. The same Jeremiah who was currently bent over my desk in my office, quietly rifling through my tote bag when I returned from the warehouse, sweaty and out of breath.
“What do you think you are doing?” I knew what he thought he was doing, but I wanted to hear him say it. He jumped back in surprise, the picture of a small child who got caught digging for early Christmas presents. He almost looked contrite, but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Come on, Regina, let me see the book.” What, no Reg-eye-na, today? Oh, he really needed something from me now.
“That book is so important that you will sneak into my office and go through my personal items to get it? That’s gross, even for you Jeremiah.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Regina. Cindy put in a huge order, and I know you do special shit for her. I know you do. She bitched about the last order being wrong and I lost a bunch of commission on the reship so just stop being such a rag baby and give me the notes.”
Ugh, even his insults were juvenile. Rag baby? What the hell person in real life actually spoke like that? To another person? He made my skin crawl.
“Get the hell out of my office, and if you want to complain, I can go with you and we can stop by Jack’s office. You can tell him how you just called me a bitch right after you were caught going through my personal items. Shall we go right now?” I wasn’t entirely certain Jack would give any shits at all about Jeremiah calling me a bitch, but theft, he took pretty seriously. And since my book of business was pretty famous in our office, Jack knew of, and approved of my methods. He was a big fan of people blazing their own trail. That book belonged to me, everyone else could figure their shit out on their own. Slow Grind was a sink or swim kind of place, and even though I didn’t use any of our products, I was still the strongest swimmer.
Suck it, Jeremiah.
"What's going on? I was gone for forty-five minutes. The entire day could not have gone downhill in that amount of time." TJ was in the process of taking off his light jacket, the faint smell of menthol cigarettes wafted from him as he rushed back into the office and slung the jacket across the back of his office chair.
"Oh, everything is fine. Jeremiah was just leaving. Goodbye, Jeremiah."
"Goodbye, Jeremiah," echoed TJ, completely nonplussed.
"Oh, piss off, TJ." Jeremiah was such a sore loser, what he thought he was going to accomplish with that attitude, I would never know. If he wasn't such a dill hole of a human, I would have gladly given him the notes I had amassed from Cindy, but he sucked on the most basic level, so he would have to pry those notes from my cold, dead hands. It's not like I had a book of spells. They were basically
personalized customer service notes. The fact that the other sales guys didn't understand the concept was really sad for them.
I waited until Jeremiah was down the hall, his grumbles fading as he stomped back to the bullpen before I turned to TJ. "TJ, you have a key to the drawer, man, I just managed to catch Gecko's order before it went off the dock today."
"Oh shit, split pallets, right?"
"Yeah. I mean, I got it before the disaster, but if you aren't sure about something, just write the order down, and I can do the entry when I get to it. I would rather have an order ship out a day later than have Gecko screaming in my ear for an hour —because he will—and he has. You always have to remember to check the book, TJ, for everybody. It takes a long time to remember everything. I still have to look at it sometimes."
I shuddered at the memory. That book of notes was basically a catalog of every mistake I had ever made, and the means to not make them again. TJ was young, and he had less level of responsibility in regards to the orders, because the accounts were mine, and I was the one who made the commission on the sales. He received an hourly wage and he was definitely a help, but again, did not have as much riding on the mistakes as I did. He wanted to move into sales though, and get his own accounts. If he was going to do that, he was going to need to learn what he needed to do to cater to customers. The best way to learn was to deal with the fallout, but in this instance I would be the one dealing with it—that was why I was pallet climbing instead of going out for lunch like TJ. Oh well, Gecko was a high dollar account, I could get a bit dirty for that commission check. Lord knows I took enough abuse in the office, the warehouse was a nice change of scenery.
I cut TJ off mid-apology, one, because I wasn't really that upset with him. The entire job was a learning process. If he hadn't been on his lunch break, he would have been out in the warehouse with me, fixing the mistake. And two, because my phone beeped a text message, and considering every account had my work number and my cell number and used them both indiscriminately, it was most likely money every time my phone made a noise. I swiped to turn the screen on and was surprised at the message from a number I didn't recognize.
The Permanence of Pain Page 6
